Be Conscious of the State of the Environment
The forest, rivers, agricultural lands, bays, and all those that form the ecosystems will all outlast us for we are just transient occupants of Gaia, our Mother Earth. Each passing generation has the absolute responsibility therefore to nurture and enrich these life support systems which are only ours to protect for those who will come after us. It behooves all of us to use these God-given resources in such a manner as not to jeopardize the ability of the coming generations to provide for their own needs.
I am afraid that we have miserably failed to stand up to that responsibility as God’s stewards of His creation. Worse, we have grossly violated the 8th Commandment, “Thou shall not steal,” as we have robbed the future of their inheritance. Indeed, as the ancient saying goes, “We did not inherit the earth from our parents but we owe these to our children, but at the rate that we have exploited our resources, we have robbed the future of their inheritance.”
Not only are we guilty of massive stealing from future generations but also widespread massacre. The Philippines has housed tremendous biological wealth, very rich in flora and fauna which are endemic in a tropical country like ours. Mr. Larry Heaney, an environmentalist from California, USA who explored Mt. Kitanglad for three months three decades ago was so amazed to find in that forest ecosystem alone the number of flora and fauna greater in number compared to those found in the whole continent of North America.
It is indeed amazing that we have in our country more than 8,000 species of flowering plants while the United States can only boost of not more than five hundred. In fact, until now we are still discovering varieties of orchids and species of birds. Our biological wealth does not end at the shorelines. Our waters surrounding the Archipelago constitute the center of the center of marine life on Earth, based on the findings of the UN-FAO study by Dr. Kent Carpenter and Dr. Victor Springer. They were even so astonished to learn that a new kind of sea shell was discovered in our waters which is a cure against cancer.
Indeed, the Philippines was once an Eden. Unlike Adam and Eve who were thrown out of paradise, we have lost Eden on our own doing. From 17 million hectares of dipterocarp forest a century or so ago, we barely have half a million hectares now. All of our biodiversity which has evolved for millions if not billions of years is almost gone. We have massacred them in just a wink of an eye. By denuding our forest, the “invisible water dam,” we have killed our rivers as some 40 major rivers in the country are now biologically dead. We have silted our bays as billions and billions of tons of topsoil were carried by the rivers to the sea which have destroyed our mangroves and coral reefs which are the habitats of marine life.
So, where have all our forests gone? Gone to loggers everyone. From 1971 to 1988, the loggers harvested 3.88 million hectares of virgin forest. In the period 1988 -1994 alone, the forestry sector lost a total of ₱104 billion worth of old and secondary growth forest, according to the Philippines Asset Account. The logging industry despite amassing forty-eight billion dollars (Asian Development Bank Report) from 1970-1988, in the same period, had only contributed from 0.5%-1.3% to the total Government Revenue. Today, the fury of nature is upon us. We must now take heed of that ecological warning: heal the blighted land back to life or perish!
Who among our leaders has passionately fought for Mother Earth? Who among them has dared to stand to stop logging then and mining now? As the Chairman of Task Force KINAIYAHAN is tasked to implement the 2013 WRIT OF KALIKASAN issued by the Court of Appeals, ordering 10 agencies of government to stop illegal logging and mining, we were so shocked to put under arrest 5 big-time illegal Chinese miners in the hinterlands of Cagayan de Oro. In whose mining campsite we found hand grenades, Armalite, and Ak-47. Those illegal miners arrested were just carrying tourist visas. We were even puzzled why they were released after only one week in prison and were even accompanied back to China by an elected official. Perhaps it is true that hundreds of thousands of pesos monthly are being shared by these illegal miners to politicians. After that arrest, our courageous volunteer in the environmental movement named Fausto Orasan known as Datu Sandigan, the fearless chieftain of the Higaonon Tribe in Cagayan de Oro was assassinated in Bry. Tumpagon one Sunday morning.
How about logging? Well, when we held three logging trucks carrying illegally cut logs owned by the late 2nd Lt. Desty Eleazar through human barricades in the nineties, he bragged to me that I could not stop him because 90% of those in the office tasked to enforce environmental laws were under his payroll. Indeed, there is no such thing as the rule of law on the environment. The powerful loggers had even established sawmills amidst the virgin forest and were well-guarded with armed men carrying high-powered guns. Don’t you know that in one shipment of logs alone, a logger would earn some 400 million pesos the Philippines has been supplying the timber needs of the world in the last century as our country has the finest timber in the world. As we have lost our ecological security in Cagayan de Oro, some 3,000 people living in the vulnerable areas were killed when Typhoon Sendong hit the cities of Cagayan de Oro and Iligan on Dec. 17, 2011. Where were the loggers and miners? They were well ensconced in their mansions. It is about time to make the loggers accountable, namely: Vicmar, TIPI, Valderrama & Sons, and Roa & Sons. Remedios Fortich and Dacudao. How can they be made accountable when some of them have been elected even as Mayor, Congressmen, and Governor? If you want to know more, please read the book of Marites Vitug, “Power from the Forests,” which contains the names of those responsible for the massive plunder of the forest ecosystem, some are still in Congress.
How can we bring back the rule of law to stop industries from treating the bays as their “waste pits,” to stop illegal fishing, to stop the use of toxic chemicals by corporations in their 200,000-hectare-massive plantations in Mindanao alone that have already contaminated our water table, the reason why many are dying of cancer and many babies are born deformed. Indeed, there is no free meal in nature. What we do to nature will surely come back to us. Nature in its own right is now responding to the cruelty and utter disregard of the homo sapiens who have been sacrificing Mother Earth to the altar of greed and profit – all for the sake of corporate globalization, so enamored in the whims and capriciousness of the mundane, controlled by the ego (devil) in pursuit of instant fame, wealth and power which King Solomon has described in Ecclesiastes as “meaningless, utterly meaningless.”
Let us now feel our interconnectedness and oneness with all of God’s creation and discover who truly we are: CONSCIOUSNESS/AWARENESS connected to the Ocean of Consciousness, the Unseen Formless Being called God. Indeed, WE MUST NOW HEAL THE BLIGHTED LAND BACK TO LIFE OR WE WILL ALL PERISH! IN ONE VOICE WE MUST SHOUT, “WE LOVE YOU GAIA!”
